


Five Eleven A.M.

by itstheallmother



Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, BAMF Pepper Potts, Hurt Tony Stark, M/M, Natasha Romanov Is a Good Bro, Nebula & Tony Stark Friendship, Protective Pepper Potts, Steve Rogers Feels, Tony Stark Feels, also idk if natnebula was a thing, but it is now, ever since I watched that trailer my ass has been on fire, i think, oh well, rhodey is Angry, this isn't exactly following the MCU but
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-02-18
Updated: 2019-02-18
Packaged: 2019-10-30 22:46:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17837450
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/itstheallmother/pseuds/itstheallmother
Summary: He’d love to say it had been his gut feeling that woke him up when it happened. His super soldier hearing, at least. But nope.It was Natasha, running into his room and shaking him awake harshly - the way his Ma would, whenever he was dangerously feverish, his eyes rolling back as he’d feel his vision blur.“Something’s - someone’s landing, Steve”.





	Five Eleven A.M.

He’d wake up every day at five. Sure, Steve had gotten used to it, but that didn't mean it still wasn't fucking annoying, and since no matter how hard he tried to fix his sleeping schedule, the nightmares wouldn’t let him, he did this instead; 

Work out for an hour. 

Have a shower. Fix up breakfast. 

Disassociate and let said breakfast turn cold - Natasha would devour it anyway, the second she woke up. 

Stare at a book for too long without absorbing a single word.

Go back to the bedroom. Look at the sun for too long, until he’s left with a headache. Go to sleep. Wake up to the dark night sky. 

Look for a sign of him. 

Laugh at himself for still hoping. Go back to bed. Try to sleep until the nightmares woke him.

Get up at five.

 

 

The most exhausting thing for him was the pretending. 

He knew, of course, that Natasha didn’t buy into any of his shit. She was one of the best goddamn spies the Red Room had raised, after all, not to mention she was able to just know everyone’s patterns inside out, just by having observed them for about a day or two. With their past, he knew damn well she could read him like the back of her hand. It showed in the ways she tried to take care of him, every single day.

But he couldn’t stop pretending - not just for her, but because of Colonel James Rhodes, too.

It was all very weird, the first time it happened. Steve, being his usual, sentimental dumbass self, was roaming the compound alone, supposedly heading nowhere in particular.

Fucking bullshit.

F.R.I.D.A.Y. would not let him in for the first few months, and Steve learned that an AI could, apparently, have feelings, not just for its creator, but for everyone else, too.

It went on like that - he'd visit, he'd get ignored, he'd leave - until one day he completely broke down, without even planning on it. He’d sworn himself he’d stay stoic, smart, not turn into a weeping mess. But this was making something primal wake up inside his stomach. The scream he’d let out was probably inhuman to the sound, but he didn’t care. He just wanted him, anything of his - he just needed to pretend.

Punching whatever material Tony had used for his bedroom was futile, he understood that now. But God, at the time he’d just been filled with so much rage, hot and bitter and ancient in his DNA structure. His fists had proven to be strong enough to dent the walls, at some point, but not strong enough to not start bleeding, too.

Steve almost didn’t register it when F.R.I.D.A.Y. finally asked him to calm down in the most detached voice, but opened the doors merely a moment after. All he could hear was his wild heartbeat and the swift motion of the heavy doors sliding open, and there, there he was, at last.

The room barely even smelled like Tony anymore. Steve suddenly felt his hands sting. His legs carried him without command, and without even turning his head around to take everything in, indulge in being in his space after years, he fell face - first in the comfortable bed and shut his mind off.

Rhodey had stopped by approximately three hours later. Steve, although deep in his slumber, had sensed him before he’d spoken.

“Did you eat his porridge too, Goldilocks?”

The Colonel’s voice dripped with deadly sarcasm, but his demeanor was not threatening. He had, after all, just found Steve sleeping like a goddamn puppy, all curled up on Tony’s side of the bed. He probably was drooling, too. Shit.

Embarrassed, Steve had flung himself out of the silk sheets and straightened his shirt. He didn’t have to catch his reflection in the mirror to know he was blushing like a stupid child caught with cookie crumbles on his lips.

“I thought I’d check his room for any leads-” he’d tried to pathetically offer, but Rhodes had just laughed at him in return. That laugh had not been friendly.

“Yeah, his bed definitely seems like a good place to start. Well done, Rogers” he’d replied. His eyes were steel inside Steve’s chest, and nothing else had to be said for him to get the message;

Get the fuck out. You don’t deserve this.

He never left his own room after that, unless it was to use the gym on his floor or grab something from the kitchen. He had a feeling Natasha had somehow ended up finding out about the incident, as she naturally always did, and couldn’t bear looking her in the eyes and admitting to just how pathetic he had been.

Rhodey dropped by more frequently after that, too, as if he was checking up on his behavior. Pepper had stopped by once, said she needed something from the workshop, and never came back. Lang had come to them a month later, stayed to “figure out a plan”, then visited every now and then as if they were actually going to take any action while half of them were-

Yeah. And that was that. 

Just him, Scott and Natasha, and Steve’s pretentious mask of detachment and calmness that made his skin itch and burn every time he saw any of them in the halls.

He figured it’d be better to stay alone for a while - his nightmares should make company enough.

In those nightmares, he dreamt of Tony, sometimes even alive, and even in his cruelest, most terrifying forms, he was the best company he’d ever hope for from now on.

 

 

The room was always a shade of dark blue at 5:11 a.m., the same as his suit used to be. He’d grown to hate that suit - but that was nothing new. He’d grown to hate a lot of things since-

Anyway.

Steve was sitting perfectly still in the quiet of his room, alone, trying to escape the same thoughts that woke him up every single night after the incident. Yeah, he would call it the incident for as long as he could, because there was no way, none, that he would utter those words out loud, ever again.

He’d tried it the first time they’d heard. Natasha was standing behind him, game-face on and everything, and she was in for a hell of a surprise. Only Bucky had known about his terrible, terrible habit of dealing with bad situations, and he’d never once approved, but, well. Not a lot you can change about a person’s coping mechanisms.

But Bucky was gone, too. And no one would ever understand like he had.

Every single time he thought of the headlines - “Tony Stark missing” - he almost had to laugh, but that laugh soon would turn bitter and sad and Natasha would scold him about it like the first time she'd heard it, and almost tear up every other time.

“Tony Stark dead in space, they mean” he’d snorted, and ran a hand through his hair as his heart broke a little more.

Natasha had sucked in a breath that sounded painful, frozen in her side of the couch. Her grip on the glass of orange juice was lethal.

“Steve, Jesus-’’

“Come on, Nat, they want to pretend? Fine, but we fucking know, I know-"

He’d stopped laughing then, and instead came a sob that broke his lungs and made his eyes burn as if they would fall out of their sockets. Natasha had later said that that was what happened when people bottled up things too long - not the eye socket thing, obviously, but the complete and utter breakdown, duh - and this time he didn’t even try to pretend this wasn’t serious.

If it was really about time he took advice about bottling things up from a Russian spy, he could acknowledge something was horribly, horribly wrong.

So here he was.

This had always been other stupid habit of his, he knew that too. Hoping, always hoping, no matter how obvious it was that he was utterly, ultimately screwed. But he could not find himself able to tear his eyes away from the bright stars for yet another night.

He just hoped Natasha didn’t know about this, too. This was all he had left.

“Goddamn it, Tony, you can’t let this be the end of us” he murmured and felt hot tears run down his face. It kind of jolted him out of his reverie because seriously, he thought he’d cried all of his tears by now.

Huh. It seemed like Tony Stark had always had a way of making him doubt himself, even when he wasn’t present. Steve let out a huffing sound that, in another life, could’ve been a genuine laugh.

“I’d let you drive me crazy for eternity if we could just spend it together” he figured later on, lying on his side as his eyes drifted shut. Exhaustion had its limits, too. Much later on, he’d love to say it had been his gut feeling that woke him up when it happened. His super soldier hearing, at least. But nope. It had been Natasha, running into his room and shaking him awake harshly - the way his Ma would, whenever he was dangerously feverish, his eyes rolling back as he’d feel his vision blur.

“Something’s - someone’s landing, Steve” she said, and her breath was stuck in her throat, as if she’d ran all the way from her room to his to tell him. Steve didn’t understand at first, but then she pulled him out of bed and dragged him to the bright light-

Bright light? It was the middle of the night outside, how on earth-

Someone is landing. Someone is landing, Steve.

“Come on” was all he got out, running towards the stairs.

 

 

Somehow, Rhodes had beaten them to the punch, and was already rushing out of the compound - when had he even gotten there? A big aircraft, from what Steve could make out in the dark, was preparing to land, and for a moment he thought he was having another one of his weirdly realistic nightmares.

This aircraft is running on autopilot, and when I rip it open by the hinges, all I will find will be a lifeless corpse.

“Steve, snap out of it”

At times like these, he was thankful for Natasha by his side, invasion of privacy be damned.

The aircraft touched down as softly as a leaf falling on the autumn ground. Steve could practically feel the electricity in the air though, the way Natasha always held her breath and Rhodes was definitely not hiding his racing one. He could hear everything - that was the serum’s curse.

Except-

Two more heartbeats. Wait. Two more heartbeats?

Before he could fully work out what that meant, the aircraft’s doors slid open, and two shadows stepped out. The smell coming out of the jet hit him like a truck, and he felt his throat constrict.

This is how all of his nightmares started. A stale, stagnant smell of human skin and lack of oxygen, burning his nostrils and infecting the fresh night air.

He couldn’t do this.

But there were two heartbeats, two, even if the second one was barely audible.

“You have to be fucking with me here” Rhodey’s almost whisper broke the dramatic silence. And then, that voice, the one that haunted his most pleasant dreams and the most horrid of his nightmares;

“Definitely not taking the fun-vee again” - faint but clear for everyone to hear.

Steve sucked in a trembling breath. Natasha’s voice was ringing in his ears, probably the most passionate he’d ever heard her, but for the life of him, he couldn't make out a single word. And then, as if a switch was snapped, everything went into motion way too fast for Steve’s blurred vision; Rhodey, running towards the shadows that were still too far away from him and Natasha to make out clearly. Natasha abruptly clenching her sides so hard Steve was positive she was hurting herself, then slowly stepping closer to the shadows. Steps that were not entirely human, metal clicking together.

Steve curses under his breath the same way he prayed every night for this, and walks closer. 

The smaller figure, the one walking up front, falls to the ground with a thud, revealing a taller, blue person standing behind. Rhodey hugs the hunched down figure while the blue person - a woman, he thinks - helps him up, but he refuses, stays in James’ arms instead. Someone is crying. A sigh of relief, then “you bastard, I told you not to do this again, I told you-”. A laugh. Everyone is suddenly around that smaller person that Steve is feeling magnetically pulled towards, and his vision is blurring even more, but the closer he gets, the more recognizable he seems to Steve;

The shorter person has black hair, a badly kept beard that is looking rough and grey at the edges, and he’s smirking, he smells like death and home and metal and he’s-

Oh God.

“Tony?”

Fiery brown eyes look straight into his eyes and Steve’s world suddenly stops spinning. It’s standing right in from of him instead.

Then Steve falls to the ground, paralyzed but has to touch him, he has to be closer, and Tony proceeds to look once at Rhodey, once back at him, and, well, pass out. Natasha mutters a quiet “shit” and bends closer to Tony’s neck, feeling his pulse. The blue woman speaks out first, though;

“I was barely able to keep him alive for our trip here. He doesn’t have much time without…nutrients, water and antibiotics” 

That’s all they need to hear. Before Steve even gets the chance to offer, Rhodey is fully carrying Tony in his arms, a sort of vengeful vibe rolling off of him in waves. Natasha’s earpiece is the only thing glimmering in the darkness and then her speaker is on, she’s ordering F.R.I.D.A.Y. to prepare the emergency medical room, tries to drag him behind her but he’s frozen in place.

Once again, he’s left alone, silent.

Steve’s mind can’t function properly yet, he knows that, somewhere deep in his subconscious - but he still prefers this outcome to his nightmares, that he is sure of. In this version, Tony is still breathing, still has a chance. Steve can live with being away from him if he at least knows he’s safe, home. He can worry about the rest, like atoning for his ignorance, later.

He shuts up the voice that whispers to him “If there even is a later for him” and goes back inside.

 

 

In the compound everything is in a whirlwind kind of motion, after a long time of the atmosphere being stale and cold, like the blood has felt in his veins since everything.

Tony has already been rushed in the compound’s E.R. while a doctor is being flown in personally for him - Rhodey’s orders, apparently. Natasha is contacting Bruce, too, thinking he could be useful running tests on Tony or guiding the incoming doctor with the technology - after all, not a lot of people can handle the technology built by Tony Stark.

Steve knows this is not the time to smile, so he swallows the pride that bubbles up in his chest.

Pepper is there, too, way quicker than any human should be able to transport anywhere, and Steve finds out just what the reason for that is; the Rescue armor. He also finds out, by overhearing the Colonel and Natasha - he knows he should feel guilty but, at this point, he really doesn’t - that all this time, she wasn’t chilling in France, mourning Tony, like Steve been thinking this entire time.

She’d been in fucking space, too, looking for him, while Rhodey handled her navigation system from his own lab and fixed her armor up whenever she returned home for maintenance.

Steve chuckles to himself. Wow. He’d really been the only one sitting on his ass being useless, huh?

He waits until Bruce has come and gone, taking the doctor with him, Pepper is eating dinner with Natasha on another floor, and Rhodey has fallen asleep next to the machines keeping Tony alive, to enter the room.

For all his bravery and time spent wishing for this very moment, Steve sure as hell feels like a coward, shivering just like he used to when he was half his current size. He enters anyway.

Tony is lying in a bed that’s swallowing his deathly frame whole, and he’s too still for someone once so radiant and full of life and energy. Someone could tell Steve he’s dead, and he’d probably believe them, with the way Tony’s paper-white skin was being illuminated by the harsh white light. 

It didn’t even look like he was breathing.

Steve realizes two things, then;

One, he’d never truly understood just how tiny Tony was, until now that he was lying malnourished and sick in front of him.

The man’s hands were delicate and bruised, the veins visible in a sickly kind of manner that Steve hadn’t seen on anyone in years. His face was shrunk, too, yellow, the only things prominent being Tony’s cheekbones and eyes, sporting a dark shade of purple at the hollows.

A feverish yellow glimmer was covering him from head to toe, from what Steve could see, and it’s the first time he isn’t craving to see more of Tony’s skin, feel his warmth against his own body. His lips were chapped and, in the clear light, Steve could see that there was grey and white streaking his hair, too.

He looked like he had aged years in just this short period he’d been missing, and Steve’s heart clenched. He didn’t even know, couldn’t even imagine-

What exactly had happened to him?

There was another thing; no matter what had happened to Tony, his health, his looks or psyche, Steve had never been more in love with a person before.

And if God, or whoever it was up there handling all of this, gave him the chance, gave him this, him, just once more, he’d make sure Tony knew, if nothing else, that Steve would be the one doing the lying on the wire if it meant keeping him safe from now on.

God, he had been so stupid.

Steve is almost scared to run his fingers over Tony’s cheekbones, to feel them gaunt and fragile under his fingertips, but he needs this, before Rhodes wakes up, before someone comes bursting in and their time is over. It’s been so long, so painfully long. He just needs proof that this is still not one of his dreams, that their shot isn’t over just yet.

So he hovers over the lying man he loves so much, and slowly, fearfully, runs a hand through his hair, down to his ear, traces his collarbone as gently as if he was made of sand. He can’t stop the smile spreading over his cheeks as his fingers trace the veins across Tony’s neck, then, and he feels himself giddy and lighter confirming that weak pulse, younger, in a way.

“Oh thank God, this is real, God, Tony-” the words spill out of his mouth like a whispered prayer and he can’t stop himself - this is the first time in months that he’s felt truly connected to his heartbeat, that his skin doesn’t feel like a lifeless meat-suit waiting for its soul to return home.

He is home, he is complete at last, and there is nothing but a soft white sheet separating him from Tony, who’s been nowhere near him but in his dreams for over a year now.

They can salvage this. He will salvage this.

A gentle cough comes by the door, then, and Steve freezes in his tracks. How did he miss the sound of steps, the door opening?

“I’m not here to kick you out” Pepper’s even, firm voice echoes through the room. It barely doesn’t wake up Rhodes, who simply shifts in his sleep but doesn’t open his eyes, and Steve’s brows raise and fall in relief to the sleeping man on the other side of the room.

“Thank you” was all he could say back. He wasn’t sure where he and Pepper stood, or where Pepper and Tony stood, either - God, they were a soap opera, and a bad one at that - but he understood he wasn’t really welcomed by any of Tony’s loved ones; even his goddamn creations were wary around him now. The walls he’d come to consider home, it seemed, had turned against him, too.

Pepper stares him up and down. Her nose is pinker than her cheeks and her eyes hold inhuman strength in them. Steve can tell she’s trying to look far more intimidating than she feels right now, but he’s no fool. He knows she’s an extraordinary woman, and he knows she’d kill for Tony. He can see why the mechanic had been so in love with her.

Her voice pulls him out of his thoughts;

“It doesn’t mean you’re off the hook, Rogers. You’ve…you’ve hurt him a lot, and watching him return like this-”

“I know”

“You both did things, but not both of you were obviously affected in the same way, and that’s all that matters to the people who love him. You know Rhodes won’t be as forgiving as I am”, she says, and it feels as if she’s testing him.

“I wouldn’t ask him to be”

“Good”

Pepper had taken to staring at the floor while he was staring at Tony, still lying peacefully in his bed, and the silence was killing him.

Everything was just a big pile of fucking bullshit. There was no option where he’d come out on top in this. No matter how he worded things, tried to reconcile if not with Tony then at least with his makeshift family, he’d still be the one who fucked things up. He’d always known, sure, but it was pretty different now that he was standing right next to the consequences of his actions.

Thankfully, it’s Pepper who breaks the silence with her sigh, turning to look at Tony, too. There was a fondness overtaking her face that Steve had never witnessed up close before. She rests her left hand on top of Tony’s knee, and Steve realizes her hands are shaking.

“Loving him sure isn’t the easiest way to live, but he’s more than worth it, isn’t he?” she whispers, and wow, she’s crying now, too, okay, Steve was definitely not prepared for that either.

“Yeah” Is all that comes out of his mouth, and he curses himself, wishes he could be poetic and romantic, but he simply can’t be smart around a woman like Virginia Potts, or, well, around him.

He suddenly recalls that one time Clint had said that he turned into a “dumb blond” every time Tony Stark was in his proximity, and Steve had blushed like a stupid teenager in front of them all and practically ran out of the room. This wasn’t really much different.

“If he wakes up-” he starts again, and Pepper glares daggers into him.

Oops.

“When, you mean” she says, and sniffles, her blush covering her cheeks and eyebrows furrowing. Steve nods while cursing himself in his head.

“When he wakes up, yes, I want to make things right. I want to try and get what we had back, before - you know” he lamely finishes.

Pepper snorts and walks toward the door, but stops as soon as her hand reaches the cold handle.

“Before you broke his heart and left him defending you all against a hundred and seventeen countries? Or before you drove his father’s shield into his heart?” she asked, and her voice turned bitter then, tired. 

Steve tried to hide his twitching eye or sweating palms, but something in Pepper’s demeanor told him he wasn’t doing a very good job. 

The voices in his mind laugh at him in an all too familiar tone, “shitty liar, Stevie”. Yeah, no shit, Buck. 

He straightens up. 

“Before all of that, yes. I’m not asking for permission, Miss Potts. I’m just asking for, well - your blessing, I guess. Maybe even…keeping Colonel Rhodes from killing me?”

That seemed to be the right thing to say to break the tension, because slowly, Pepper’s lips turn upwards and she wipes her eyes, hands still trembling. She nods, one hand still at the door, but this time her grip is lighter. She smiles.

“I will try, but no promises on the Rhodey part. Come on up now, before he wakes up. We’ve ordered Indian, if Natasha hasn’t inhaled it all”

It pains Steve to take his hands away from his beloved, but he knows it’s for the best. Winning a battle didn’t meant winning the war, and the next one was just about to wake up if he stayed any longer. 

As they leave the room, Steve swears he’s being delusional, but he hears the faintest snort. He turns around and finds the man in the white sheets almost smiling, and he’s truly sure he’s lost it.

 

He doesn’t mind.


End file.
